Major International Climate Report Challenges UN Alarmism

Before the United Nations released the summary of its widely ridiculed global-warming report last week, another major scientific report on climate change was already casting serious doubts on the escalating alarmism being peddled by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Produced by dozens of scientists with the independent Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, the landmark document reviewed much of the same evidence as the UN body, but came to widely different conclusions about what the science really shows.

Meanwhile, the 1,200-page NIPCC report, dubbed “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science,” counters much of the hysteria being propagated by the UN and national governments in their effort to secure a planetary carbon regime. Among other key points, the dozens of independent scientists found that the human impact on climate is very small. Any warming that may be caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, the report argues, is likely so small that it is essentially invisible against a background of natural variability.

The NIPCC experts also challenge the radical notion that carbon dioxide — an essential gas exhaled by all humans but relentlessly demonized by the UN and many governments — can be considered “pollution.” Of course, there is no argument over the fact that human emissions of CO2 represent a fraction of one percent of the greenhouse gases present naturally in the atmosphere. But the NIPCC scientists point out that the gas is not only not harmful, it is largely beneficial.

“CO2 is ‘the gas of life,’” said NIPCC contributing author Dr. Tom Segalstad, associate professor of resource and environmental geology and geochemistry at the University of Oslo. “The more CO2, the more life. More CO2 means we can feed more people on Earth. CO2 is contributing very little to the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Clouds have much more influence on temperature.” NIPCC lead author and meteorologist Dr. Madhav Khandekar, who worked with the IPCC until becoming outraged by its lack of interest in proper scientific review, also pointed out that human-added CO2 is not destabilizing the climate.

The NIPCC authors, whose report contains thousands of citations to peer-reviewed literature, also do not believe man-made global warming represents a crisis. They argue that not enough is even known about the climate to make policy-relevant recommendations at this point. Executive Director Tom Harris with the International Climate Science Coalition, however, went further, saying the NIPCC report “demonstrates that the science being relied upon by governments to create multi-billion dollar policies is almost certainly wrong.” Indeed, the independent scientists even point out that whatever small warming may occur would probably produce some benefits as well.

On top of that, as numerous other experts around the world have also pointed out, climate models cited by the UN have severe “limitations,” as the NIPCC team diplomatically termed it. In fact, the “limitations” are so severe that they failed to predict the lack of warming over the last 17 years and, according to experts, are all but useless in trying to determine future temperature changes. The UN quietly admitted as much in its latest climate report by arguing that the missing warming was hiding somewhere in the deep oceans, as MIT meteorology Professor Richard Lindzen explained recently.

NIPCC editor Professor Robert Carter, former head of the School of Earth Sciences at Australia’s James Cook University, said the report uses layman’s language to present solid evidence that climate changes are “well within the bounds of natural variability.” He added: “Real world observations tell us that the IPCC's speculative computer models do not work, ice is not melting at an enhanced rate, sea-level rise is not accelerating, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is not increasing, and dangerous global warming is not occurring.”

According to atmospheric science professor Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville, the temperature data show that all 73 computer models cited in the latest IPCC report are wrong. After analyzing all of the models cited by the UN report, he said that not a single one had accurately predicted that temperatures would remain flat since 1996. “All 73 models’ predictions were on average three to four times what occurred in the real world,” Dr. Christy told CNSNews.

In stark contrast with the NIPCC report, the IPCC claims that it is more certain than ever that humanity is causing global warming. A draconian global “carbon budget” for humanity administered by the UN, the IPCC alleges, is urgently needed to stave off catastrophic global warming. The radical plan to empower the dictator-dominated planetary body would devastate the world economy while doing virtually nothing for the climate, according to analysts. That would make it even harder to adapt to natural climate changes that can and will occur in the future.

“We urge the public to compare and contrast these two reports on what is probably the most important public policy issue of our age,” said Joseph Bast, president of the non-partisan Heartland Institute, which sponsored the monumental climate report along with the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. The NIPCC report, Bast explained, was produced by independent scientists with “no agenda other than to find the truth,” and the summary accurately reflects the full study.

The IPCC report, however, was produced by a “government agency, part of the United Nations,” Bast pointed out. Its mission, he explained, is to find a human impact on climate change, and each IPCC report has expressed a “higher level of alarmism” even as the UN’s own experts continue to criticize the hysteria. In the wake of its previous scandal-plagued report, which was filled with basic errors, and the latest one, more than a few experts are now calling for the IPCC to be disbanded.

Experts with the NIPCC have blamed the “politicization of science” for the UN’s increasing alarmism in the face of its theories and models crumbling on the world stage. “In the 1960s, science and politics did not mix,” noted Professor Carter in London while unveiling the NIPCC report there, adding that the education system in many countries was peddling climate propaganda not based in reality. “As my career has progressed through to retirement, I’ve seen more and more a creeping politicization of universities and science itself.”

The IPCC, Carter addedwhile calling the UN entity a “political body,” has publicly presented a “profoundly distorted” view of climate science to the public and is “destroying the essence of the scientific method.” While the evidence supporting UN climate hysteria is getting “weaker and weaker,” Carter continued, the IPCC is ramping up the alarmism. “This is hocus-pocus science and the IPCC report is full of it,” he said. “It's a religion, in fact, that has to be challenged.”

Of course, climate alarmists are already attacking the NIPCC report — mostly with insults and childish taunts rather than evidence or facts. However, the comprehensive climate report is still making big waves around the world as the UN panel becomes increasingly discredited amid major scandals, failed predictions, wildly inaccurate climate models, and more. While much of the press continues to parrot the IPCC line, it appears that the tide is turning fast.

Image: part of cover of NIPCC report

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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